I wish I had a photo of the original, but it was the typical long list of all the stores broken down by categories and each category was colour coded. The designers had done their best to help you scan through the material, but still, it was a huge eyeful.

There is an extra step in this new design – an extra click – to get you to where you need to be, but it’s ultimately faster because you haven’t had to spend the time finding your way through a lot of irrelevant material.

The other important element of this new design is that three options are presented to you in a very obvious way – big buttons with simple text and icons. Stripping down the content to three elements would not be as effective if the three buttons were crowded and heavy on design (gradient backgrounds, lots of lines, lots of images, etc.). Keeping it simple should apply across the board.

Starting today and for the next several days, you'll be inundated with ads for 70% or more off hosting for your website. Stay calm and don't get caught up in the frenzy.
Bad hosting is bad, even if it's really really cheap.
Sure, most hosting … [Continue reading]

I saw this question posed in a LinkedIn discussion, but I hear it all the time: Should I have an email newsletter or a blog? The answer is: it's the wrong question.
Most small businesses should have both, and the question should be: What kinds of … [Continue reading]

In 2015-16, PayPal has been making major changes to its user interface, including its checkout pages. A client called me the other day saying there might be something wrong with a PayPal button on their site. Some of her customers thought they were … [Continue reading]

The other day a client sent me a video in MOV format. Now you can use this on the web, but MP4 is much more flexible because programs like WordPress will automatically generate a player for MP4s. So I needed to convert my client's file.
Luckily … [Continue reading]

If you're not visiting your own website regularly, you could end up with outdated content, and the consequences can be serious: from visitors trying a phone number that no longer works, to visitors seeing your company as lazy because there's a signup … [Continue reading]

Answering questions from your customers and clients is a great source of material for your website's blog. Not only are you providing valuable information, but you know that this is information people are looking for, so it will really help your … [Continue reading]

First of all, congratulations for putting your website address in your email signature. You've made it easy for correspondents to get to your site. But are you tracking how many of them click on that link?
If you're using Google Analytics for your … [Continue reading]

When you're buying a domain name it's easy to be distracted by flashy advertising of low prices, but to know what a domain name is truly going to cost you over time, look for the fine print: … [Continue reading]

An organization I once worked for had a staff of about 40 people. Every few days I would get an email from one of them asking me to put a "really important" item on the website's home page. "Oh, and make sure it's really visible, near the top if … [Continue reading]

Knowing what possible menu items you have available is important, but depending on where you're editing menus, those items may not be obvious.
Editing from Appearance -> Menus
On the desktop Menus screen, possible menu items are on the left, … [Continue reading]